There he is, the great man himself, Toronto Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong standing in front of a public toilet with a hand-lettered construction paper sign saying “$600,000.”

Apparently the man has no friends. For no one has taken him aside and told him that a grown man should not stand in front of a public toilet with a sign announcing what appears to be his going rate. And for what? Such a sign can be easily misunderstood.

I don’t know what tourists strolling through Cherry Beach Sports Fields as they enjoyed the waterfront thought when they saw him. Every man has a price and his is $600,000? Good luck to you, sir.

The things one can do in a public washroom are all, incontestably, very cheap. Is Minnan-Wong suggesting we charge tourists $600,000 per visit? They’d have to be one pretty desperate busload. But then we are all desperate in certain rare and urgent moments, which is why public washrooms exist in the first place.

Always best to go before you leave the house/hotel room. Parents tell children this and then you see one annoyed-looking parent standing guard by a car stopped at the side of the highway, and the other parent dealing with a howling child and various other matters off in the bushes somewhere.

Swedish department stores like NK charge 10 kronor, which is $1.60 and well worth the price for a clean well-lighted place. I have paid one pound sterling to use the first-floor washrooms in Harrods — I’m not sure it still charges this — but only to laugh at Mohamed al-Fayed’s idea of a fancy toilet. I don’t like marble. For a pound, I want silk wallpaper on stretchers, I want throw pillows and a steam machine.

But for $600,000? I’m not sure Toronto has the capacity to provide that level of luxury even to the most discerning visitor. Dubai might try it and Japan has already achieved it — their toilets heat, wash, blow-dry and then accompany you on your date — but I’m afraid Toronto’s democratic mindset will not provide a toilet paper roll of cloth-of-gold. Our boxed tissue may be made of hammered baby fishskin but tourists will still have to blow their own noses.

This Minnan-Wong is climbing up the wrong rope here.

Oh. I am being told that in fact he was holding up his sign not to lure passing traffic or suggest a luxury upgrade but to complain that the large municipal bog welcoming men, women and children was too nice. Minnan-Wong has attached his little red wagon to Mayor Rob Ford’s fiscal star and, according to the Toronto Sun’s Don Peat, wants to save public money.

The building is large and beautifully ventilated, with a roof overhang to shelter visitors from rain. It cost $600,000, with fully $175,000 on design work, which he thinks is profligate.

What Minnan-Wong thinks Cherry Beach visitors deserve is apparently a tarpaper shack. A child could design it. In fact children do. Ask a child to draw a house. It will be a square with a hat, the universal architectural plans for every civic building in a city run by Minnan-Wong, who clearly dreams of replacing Ford.

I do too, but not with Minnan-Wong.

Ford doesn’t like fancy public toilets either, I imagine, because he doesn’t use them. He just finds a tree and pees on it.

What worries me is that Minnan-Wong must have known the original problem faced by Waterfront Toronto, which was that the area has no sewers. Think about that. Or maybe don’t. They had to place the whole thing on a slab, Peat wrote, build a huge holding tank, and find a way to drain, oh there were endless revolting challenges. It sounds very Hoover Dam to me.

He is also complaining that the men’s washroom is getting ratty-looking with rusty dryers and broken lights. I don’t know what you guys have been doing in there but stop it.

Minnan-Wong is planting his flag on a plan to make Toronto look awful. He would have Sugar Beach umbrellas collapse on our heads. He would have us dry our hands on a tiny fire we have built outside the toilet stall with nothing more than twigs and gumption.

Initially I felt sorry for Minnan-Wong. Then I stopped. There comes a point where a politician’s need for attention makes him pitiable rather than ludicrous. I haven’t reached that point yet.

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